Pregnancy Update | 3rd Trimester

I’m down to the last weeks of pregnancy!

These last few weeks are starting to feel longer than the rest. Mostly because I’m just so excited to meet our little man!! It feels so close, especially knowing that I could go into labor at any time. There is not much left to do before his arrival.. except agree on his name. Other than that minor detail, we are ready when Baby is! I find myself wanting to go into labor.. I can’t wait to hold him!! But I also want him to stay in there as long as he needs to.

Each trimester has seen a fairly big life event/change and the 3rd is no different. In the first trimester, I completed my last semester and graduated college! In the second trimester, I started a full time job. And in the third one we moved to a house! We are finally starting to settle into our new place out in the country. The transition was rough to say the least. I cried for the whole first week. But I’m pretty sure that’s behind me now. Instead of looking at and thinking about all the things I dislike about this house, I’m trying to focus on the good. But more on that in another post.

For now: the 3rd trimester.

My symptoms are pretty much on par with the 3rd trimester norm. Swelling, aches, and just in general being uncomfortable. But a new one has very recently come back from the 1st trimester: the bionic smell and with that: nausea. The smell of coffee is starting to make my stomach churn again and I can smell it anywhere in the house. The other day Simeon wiped out my glass with a paper towel and when I was drinking from it, the paper towel was all I could smell.

At the beginning of my third trimester, I had my glucose and iron levels checked. They said that if I didn’t hear back from them, I was in the clear for gestational diabetes. After 24 hours I didn’t hear back from them and figured I was in the clear. Then at hour 25 I had a missed call from the doctor. Uh-oh. After a series of phone tag, I got the results: I don’t have gestational diabetes!! But they were calling to tell me that I was slightly anemic.

That is one way to make anemia sounds like the best news in the world. This was to be expected anyway since they prenatal vitamins I was taking didn’t have iron in them. They told me to switch out my vitamins and have a high iron diet.

At the end of March we celebrated a friend getting married and got to see family as well.

Simeon and I attempted to get a nice picture but that clearly failed…

In the beginning of April we had a baby shower for my sister – our babies are due just one month apart! I fell down the marble stairs leaving work and got a pretty nasty bruise but thankfully baby was okay! Easter came along and my growing belly made it difficult to squeeze into my dress.. and the growing belly only further accentuated my off center belly button!

Tax season ended so I had my last day of work! That freed me up to pack for our move and Simeon and I were finally able to go on a date for the first time in 4 months! We went to Culvers 🙂 As of the 31 week appointment baby was head down and he’s stayed that way ever since.

Within the first week of being done with work I started tackling the packing – there were 2 weeks from the time I finished working to the time we were moving. I got to hang out with my sisters again and we did a lot of garage sale-ing. We were 2 preggos (7 & 8 months) plus 1 with a broken ankle.. we were quite the ensemble 😉 I bought 3 vacuums in the span of a half hour (nesting?) and of course, made lots of to do lists 🙂

Simeon’s 27th birthday came around so we celebrated it with breakfast in bed, grilled steak, and angel food cake. We didn’t have an angel food cake pan so I had a fun time improvising with glass bottles in the middle. We went to Menards and he picked out wood to make a Kubb (Swedish yardgame) set.

He wanted to wood burn runestone markings on them and here is the almost finished project (he later stained them gray) :

May came around and my baby really started to grow. It was still cold out but I couldn’t even try to button any of my coats.

The ladies at church were very sweet and threw me a baby shower!

Lots of friends and family came to help us move the day of and throughout the week and we couldn’t do it without them! Our Bible study group came over the week before the move to help clean out the house we were moving into. It sat vacant for a while so there was a lot of cleaning and debugging to do. Jeff & Renee came up earlier and loaded up the cars (in the pouring rain) and brought a load over. My friend Michelle came over multiple times, including early on moving day because Simeon got called into work the night shift the night before :O. Fun fact: 4 out of the 6 girls helping on moving day were pregnant. #somethinginthewater

My mom, Liz, Mya & Cora came up later in the week to help and that was a huge blessing. They helped unpack, organize, and clean out our apartment. The girls were a very captive audience for Simeon’s gun safety talk.

Goodbye old apartment

Then the house projects began!

The week after the move Simeon comes home from work in time middle of the night (never a good thing) and tells me that he just got back from the ER. (Hello, worst fears confirmed much?!) Turns out his shoulder suffered a posterior dislocation (it popped out the back). Between the 2 (3) of us we had almost an able bodied person. Simeon can bend down and I can lift things above my head. But we are thankful for God’s timing in it all. It happened after the move and Simeon had 2 weeks off work while he waited for doctors appointments and to see if there was a possibility of light duty. This really helped with the moving transition. Plus it was the most time we’ve ever spent together uninterrupted by jobs! For 3-4 weeks he has had to keep his arm in a sling so it gets stiff. Then next week he starts physical therapy to retrain and build his strength. 6-8 weeks from the initial injury is when they will reevaluate to see whether he is ready for full duty.

Baby shower with the fam!

Around week 38 I started to get labor symptoms. Along with being nauseous and throwing up, my contractions were coming pretty regularly – about 2 minutes apart – and were increasing in strength. I called the doctor and they said to come in to be evaluated.

Turns out I was not going into labor but I had the stomach flu which lead to dehydration which is why the contractions were so frequent. Being that sick towards the end of my pregnancy was not fun.

They drew blood to check my levels and found my potassium was pretty low so they gave me pills. They also found ketones in my urine. They gave me anti-nausea medication to help with the throwing up and pumped me full of 3 liters of IV fluids. Once they were satisfied with the progress I was making, they sent me on my way.

I think this is 39 weeks pregnant. We bought this shirt so I could grow into it during pregnancy and did I ever… When we first got it, I honestly didn’t think that the shirt would ever fit me, even while I was pregnant! But, it did 😉

We found ways to pass the time: tea parties, walks, making scones, and reading The Hobbit. I packed and repacked my hospital bag.

June 16: My due date came.. and went. No baby. In honor of the due date, we decided it was finally time to agree on a name.. so we rolled the dice. We finally had a name! (Even though we switched it at birth.) The next day was Father’s Day and again no baby. We drove out to a park on the Mississippi and walked around.

With no baby in sight, I had to go to my Week 40 doctor’s appointment. At this point I wasn’t loving being pregnant as much.. The past week I was trying everything to get labor going. I was drinking about 3-4 cups of raspberry leaf tea while bouncing on the yoga ball full time by this point. I ate pineapple until my mouth was sore.. core and all. We went on walks and I even scrubbed the floors on my HANDS AND KNEES AT 40 WEEKS PREGNANT.

I showed up to the doctor hoping I’ve made some progress and nothing. Not what you want to hear after all that. She pulled up a quick ultrasound to make sure baby was head down. He was. The doctor scheduled an ultrasound to make sure I was safe to keep going and scheduled my induction date for a week later. It felt like this baby wasn’t going to come any time soon and I was pretty discouraged. I curled up on the couch and switched back to my milk tea. Clearly nothing was working so I was going to take a break from trying. Simeon prayed about it with me, asking God to bring this child in His perfect timing and for us to be okay with that. After that we went to bed.

That must have been what God was waiting for because a few short hours later, I woke up in labor.

Published by Natalie

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One comment

What a special post! Fun to go back and re-live the 3rd trimester. You were busy ! Working , moving , etc. I forgot about Simeon’s shoulder.. you guys went through so much! And I love the photos of you at your showers, adorable. So exciting baby is finally here 🙂